


no longer, love.

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, abstract angst, canonverse, u know - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:49:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5040073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>hiareth: "a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was."</em><br/>—<br/>Cruelty, internalized—had been the only explanation for the feeling pouring from the cracks between their ribs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no longer, love.

**Author's Note:**

> This is some cryptic bullshit.

He could only say he was nostalgic—small patch of burning tinder within his lungs turning to blaze, as it moves outward, trapping his heart and encasing a heated mind. It was a longing, as well—for what he wants, already had—had never wanted. 

—for what could have been, and should have been. A hand, gripping his—calloused palm resting there, rough thumb rubbing scorching lines into the side. 

And he could pretend—did pretend, yet at some times didn't have to. It was in those fleeting contacts, and dull smiles that he knew it should be. And that it would be. 

—because he loved him, in empty eyes rimmed with weariness till they made contact, blaze melting silver. It was returned—but he would always long for more than the stolen meeting of eyes and the brief uttering of a name. 

He deserved more than this. 

And the other agreed—because he should not have held captive this boy turned man in a cycle of oppressive longing. 

Cruelty, internalized—had been the only explanation for the feeling pouring from the cracks between their ribs.

And the younger man with a delicate world balanced in his shaking palm, would continue to walk along a line of fleeting nostalgia for a love that would never come true—because he'd say that feeling, no matter how profound, however immovable like great mountains beyond the walls—that feeling was nonexistent, child of an idle brain and heart like a wanderer. 

And as he'd lay in bed, palms facing to the sky—he would ask himself why it was, that he felt more weight on his chest whenever _he_ would come around. Ribs cracked beneath the pressure, and he could do nothing to staunch the flow of sadness, of longing for a nonexistent love, from within. 

And he'd thought it ironic, really—how he could feel a nostalgia for something he'd never truly had. But it was a violence unto himself, to think on it, so he'd chosen not to. 

Yet the greatest violence was the burying of his recognition—hiding away from himself as his captain attempted to do so. 

Eren Jaeger, had never been one for pretty words—nor for art that could be seen—never been one for love, appreciation—externalized. Yet he'd be found in the cover of night's purple hues—smearing red across a canvas not meant to be seen. And the captain knew then, that it was not intended as a painting, but as a representation. For it was burning, and he was flickering—the licking death and desire at humanity's door. 

Eren Jaeger was not one for words, so much as action. 

Yet he'd crawl into the bed they'd come to share, but only on some nights, when the aching had come too much to bear—his fingers still bleeding of imaginary crimson, muttering unintelligible words till they'd shift to hopeless 'I love you's.' 

And all any man could do was hold him, for even so-called monsters cannot defeat such demons—creatures that create a dull ache within a chest that's only seen eighteen years—one not deserving to be so hollow, soon burning the older man's throat and proceeding in the murder of a flowering mind. 

No, Levi had never seen him as a monster. He had saved him in too many ways to count. 

—was the creator of a bright hope in a location he had been sure to never feel again, beneath cracking ribs and an aching diaphragm—grain and sustenance rising from long burnt fields of his past. 

He was the man's law, his deity— _everything,_ as his name would fall off of thin lips when no one but he could hear. 

No—Eren Jaeger was no monster. 

And he had never been one for lies.

—except for those he told himself when he believed no one would overhear; his voice cracking as he mumbles, words of stagnant, poisonous liquid pouring from chapped lips to the dank, cavernous atmosphere of his captain's chest—plucking the reluctant flowers bloomed there one by one, root by shallow root. 

_'I am nothing.'_

And he would wish for simplicity—of a time where he was not the paradigm for _'great soldier.'_

Eren Jaeger killed himself slowly, but surely—with a longing for a love that would never ring true, for a man dedicated to a cause that slowly slipped through their fingers with each passing day. 

No, he _murdered_ —got away with it each and every day as he did massacre unto himself, eyes blazing in the dead of night before becoming nothing more than an ashen wasteland. 

He'd suppose the moral was to want not—but his itching fingertips and broken nostalgia were of their own mind.

So he'd continue to want—and long for the day to end all days, or at least to cease the vibration in his hands and pounding within his chest. Come death, hell, or highest water—he'd be free. 

—from love, and out of it where he'd never be.

**Author's Note:**

> let me kno whatcha think tho.


End file.
